How to Buy a New Home

One of the American Dreams that seems to attract many is being able to have a home designed for you by an architect and built especially for you by a well-known home builder.

<<==Fine example of well-planned new home.

Or the other option.To find a home builder who builds a few homes each year in already developed and mostly built out subdivisions, and buy one of his.

The main buyer rational is that your home won't be from a cookie cutter.

Over the years I’ve roamed through many such homes, throughout the stages of their building, and then after they’re completed.

The numbers of mistakes and overlooked errors in design I find are often mind boggling.

Some years ago, I was with a company that was little league track home builder.

Our homes were designed and built for the affluent; for the top 15% or so of the Houston wage earners.

We would have, say, eight different models designed by a well-known architect, then build one of each as our models in our subdivision's model park.

What was interesting was that when we began furnishing the models, we would find one error after another; not always serious, but for sure always stupid.

With furniture in a home, almost everyone who is seriously looking can see mistakes. But when you're buying, it's before your furniture is inside so that you can evaluate the end results.

So we made an executive decision. We would not put any product on the market until we had furnished it, found the errors, then remodeled the home to get rid of them.

From that point forward, our plans became “as built” and not original.And we sold many and with fine results.

The advantage of buying a home from a tract builder or from a builder who has built the same plan many times, is that they have discovered the bugs along the way, so that the chances of them recurring in a recently built home or one under construction is minimal.

I recently saw a home under construction where the builder had taken a stock plan and modified it to fit the lot and while they were at it, to increase the number of bedrooms and baths.

The result was placement of furniture in the master bedroom will block more than 50% of every bedroom window, a staircase to the second floor is entirely too steep and has no landing, and where about 30% of the second floor is walled off and unusable.

Forcing a floor plan to fit inside of a predetermined exterior design is almost always doomed. It is in this case.

Buying a new home has less chance of failure if it is bought from a tract builder who has built and sold that model many times, or from a small builder who can show you that specific plan built out, and is willing to introduce you to the homeowners.

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